WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: no more chocolate milk in our schools!

Today is a great day for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) kids...Superintendent John Deasy announced that there are plans to remove chocolate and/or strawberry-flavored milk, starting next fall.  Yeah!!! Check out the article!

Why am I so excited about this?!  Yes, I know I don't have children at LAUSD.  I actually don't have any children at the moment.  But soon, the time will come when the hubs and I will have kids and they will attend LAUSD.  Another reason why I'm so excited about this?!?!  Well because I know I was a small part of the team that helped to make this happen.  I loved Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution season one!  I mean here's a show that's not out there to change just an individual's life or even a family's life - it's a show trying to make such an impact by targeting a whole school district.  It's absolutely incredible!

So when my friend Juice and I heard that Jamie Oliver was coming to the LAUSD, we were excited!  But of course the LAUSD members didn't want any part of the show and didn't want any of the schools to be filmed.  I wondered why?  What's the big deal?  He's trying to clean up our cafeterias! Well I must admit that I attended private schools only up until college so I never experienced LAUSD's cafeteria food.  So I don't really know first hand how bad the food is.

I was watching the second episode of this current season of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution when the children from LAUSD brought the food they were being served to Jamie Oliver's kitchen.  What I saw shocked me...there were wrapped danishes, pizza, chocolate milk - all kinds of junk food.  Had I known this was being served, I would have begged my parents to enroll me in a public school haha!

Well that episode made me realize that wow, they have a lot to hide and to be afraid of should this show air.  At the beginning of the year, I was one of those people who emailed every single LAUSD board member to let Jamie Oliver into their schools.  Watching this second episode made me realize how important those emails were and how truly we can all make a difference by doing something small.

So if you don't like the food being served to your kids at school, do something about it! :)

HOMEMADE MONDAY MEALS: balsamic pork chop & sweet potato fries!

I love pork, I love pork chops!  I recently made some yummy pork chops on my new favorite kitchen gadget, the grill pan.  Oh and I made some sweet potato fries to accompany my pork! Here are easy recipes I came up with.

Balsamic Pork Chops & Sweet Potato Fries

4 lean pieces of pork chops (with or without bone)
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/2 tablespoon of minced garlic
pepper

2 large sweet potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
salt & pepper

First pre-heat the oven at 375 for the sweet potato fries.  Then marinade the pork chops with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, minced garlic and lots of pepper.  Marinade for about 15 minutes.

In the meantime, prep the sweet potato fries by peeling and slicing them into "french fries" pieces.  Then add olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  Then place into the oven, about 10-15 minutes each side.

It's time to grill the pork!  So place the marinated pork chops into a hot grill pan, it takes about 5 minutes on each side if you are using a grill press.  If you don't have a grill press, just cover the pan. Once both sides of the pork chop turns a bit brown, then you may want to cut a little piece to make sure the inside is cooked also.  That's it you're done.  Pair it with an easy salad of spinach, sliced tomatoes, avocado and sprinkle with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  Yummy!!!

what you need

marinade the pork chops with balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil and pepper

looking like they are done!

organic sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's - a staple in our home

prepping to go into the oven

our yummy and healthy dinner!

FEATURE FOOD FRIDAYS: umami burger in Studio City

I'm really am not one of those people who like to follow the hype, at least when it comes to food.  So last week we had dinner plans with a couple of our good friends and they wanted to try Umami Burger.  One just opened around our area and they wanted to try it.  I was excited but I knew there would be a long wait.  Sure enough when we got there, there was a handful of people waiting outside and the wait was 40min!  AND they didn't have pagers, we were told that they could contact our cell phone when our table was ready but it would be a $10 service charge.  What the heck?!?!

So we finally get seated and we peruse the menu which is not extensive.  I order the day's special of a pastrami burger - burger meat and a think slice of pastrami with grilled onions and some special umami sauce.  Oh and of course I also ordered some malt liquor tempura onion rings and sweet potato fries to go with it.  The food came pretty quickly.  I'm not sure if I was just famish or the food was really just that good or a combination of both.  But the burger was delicious - it was moist and tasty and the bread is awesome (I think they used potato bread).  The onion rings were awesome, the perfect amount of tempura batter.  The sweet potato fries were like addictive, they had a cinammon/nutmeg/salt/seasoning and I think they added some sugar too.  Sooo bad for you but tasted sooo good!  

Anyway, I highly recommend the place although I recommend that you wait until the hype has subsided - that way you don't have wait so long for a table.

my pastrami burger (not much lighting at the place)

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: your hood as your work out tool!

Before we moved into our new place, I told my girlfriend that I will be walking to Wholefoods everyday.  It's a one mile walk and another mile back, not bad right?  No, not bad at all except that we live on a hill - a fairly steep hill at that.  I've only walked to Wholefoods once and I was picked up by my husband on my way back - ugh so annoyed as I didn't get the chance to feel the pain of walking back uphill.

So I have not been following my routine lately of going to the gym during my lunch break.  So yesterday I decided to punish myself and run around my hood.  We always make excuses not to exercise - too busy to run, gym membership is so expensive, gym is too far, we don't have the right equipment, and the list goes on and on!  But you know running is awesome - it's free and heck you don't even need shoes AND you can run anywhere!  So yesterday I ran around my hood.  Going downhill was easy breezy, didn't even break a sweat.  Coming uphill was a different story.  I felt like I was barely covering any ground as I was running uphill.  I'm sure it looked like I was strolling if you were driving by me.  I only ran for about 25 minutes and I was drenched in sweat, like I've been in spin class for 40 min!  I took a couple of pictures of the dreaded hill.

easy breezy downhill

pure pain

HOMEMADE MEALS MONDAYS: rainbow trout, asian style!

So last weekend, the hubs and I decided to take a stroll down Pacific Palisades.  We had a delicious brunch at Cafe Vida and the Mexican hot chocolate was amazing!  Then we went shopping at the farmer's market down the street.  I've been to handful of farmer's markets and I get very excited when they sell poultry or any types of meats because it's not so common.  So imagine my excitement when we came across a booth that sold seafood! We had to get something just to support the local fisherman!  So the hubs decided on rainbow trout, not sure why.  Well I've never made it before but I did come up with this marinade for salmon a while back...I figured it's pretty fool-proof and it was haha!

Rainbow trout, Asian style!

4 rainbow trout fillets (we made the mistake of buying ones with bones and skin - it was a pain to remove after the fish was cooked!)
1 bunch of scallions/green onions
1/4 cup of grated ginger (peel first - love ginger!)
1 tablespoon of garlic
2 tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce
olive oil
salt and pepper

Ok this is extremely simple.  Chop up the scallions and grate the ginger.  Place half of the chopped scallions and half of the grated ginger in a storage bag.  Add the tamari or soy sauce, garlic, a little bit of olive oil and the fish fillets.  Mix it all up and marinade for about 10 minutes.  Then add some olive oil to a heated skillet. Stir in the other half of the scallions and ginger for a about a minute, then cook up the fillets!  It only takes a few minutes to cook each side of the fish.  That's it, you're done!  I've tried using this marinade with salmon and baking the salmon instead of cooking it in a skillet, and I have gotten the same yummy result!

ingredients

fish in marinade

the smell in the kitchen was so awesome when this was happening

rainbow trout, asian style!